A Health Insurance Criminal Pleads His Case

If mandatory health insurance goes through, it will turn me into a criminal. I don’t have health insurance. I don’t want it. And I will refuse to buy it even though I can afford it. Before they lead me to the cell, perhaps the prisoner may be allowed to say a few words in his defense.

It’s understandable that politicians are eager to eliminate the medically uninsured. For years they’ve been told that we are the flies in the ointment of health care policy. It is said we are either a) wrecking the system by using services we don’t pay for, or b) deprived of needed medical care and therefore objects of pity and subsidy.

These points may apply to some uninsured but not to all. Some of us belong in what might be called the “successfully uninsured” category. We are not freeloaders. We believe we have an obligation to pay for the medical care we receive, and we always pay for it. I put no financial burden on doctors, hospitals, or taxpayers, and politicians are wrong to assume I am part of the country’s health care problem.

Politicians are also wrong to assume that I am an object of pity. Like many Americans, I have significant savings and can afford medical expenses out of pocket. (Census Bureau figures for 2000 show that over 18 million households had assets in excess of $250,000). Our savings make it possible for my wife and me to decline both private insurance and Medicare (we are 70). Those without savings are in a different situation: They probably need insurance, or a subsidy, or charitable help. My point is that if you can handle your own medical bills through savings and personal responsibility, this is a sound approach. Politicians should encourage this state of self-reliance, not criminalize it.

There are many advantages to being insurance-free. The first is flexibility. Several years ago, my wife had a serious bout with cancer. The successful treatment involved surgery and local radiation therapy. After much study she refused the more massive radiation treatment recommended by the doctor and pursued alternative therapies, including acupuncture, nutritional therapy, massage, and naturopathic medicine. Every decision was made in terms of what seemed best to treat this illness. We were not drawn into using inappropriate therapies because they were “free,” nor did we pass up desirable therapies because they were “not covered.”

The second advantage of being insurance-free is we avoid bureaucracy. We don’t fill out insurance forms; we don’t make phone calls trying to find out what’s covered; and we don’t play games (with the collusion of doctors) trying to get things we need paid for by someone else. If an aching back suggests the need for a different mattress, we go out and buy one and don’t waste time and money trying to prove to some clerk that it’s covered. When the government offered a new piñata of benefits in the form of prescription drug coverage, we entirely escaped the frustration of figuring out how to deal with its staggering confusion. While other seniors were closeted with lawyers trying to decide what to sign up for, we went hiking.

Refusing health insurance may have advantages, but what will happen if I face a medical problem that requires more than my savings? To understand my answer, consider a parallel question about some other commodity—say, housing. I announce that I believe in paying for housing from my own financial resources. Someone points out there might be a house I want that costs more than I can afford. That’s just too bad: I don’t get to buy it. I limit my housing consumption according to my resources.

I look at medical care the same way: If something costs too much, I do without. This position, so obvious and sensible in other areas, is considered untenable when it comes to medical care. In this realm the prevailing assumption is that everyone is entitled to all the health services he needs or wants.

It’s one thing to announce this entitlement as an ideal, but quite another to make it work. In the real world medical resources are limited, and therefore all approaches to health care funding employ rationing.

In tax-based systems administrators establish waiting lists so that some patients die before their opportunity for treatment comes up. They ban the use of expensive treatments and alternative therapies. And, without exactly saying so, they underfund medical facilities, so that patients wait in the halls of emergency wards, for example. In commercial insurance plans rationing is implemented by restricting coverage to specific procedures and specific doctors—and by setting upper limits to coverage.

Paying your own medical bills is simply another way of limiting consumption: If a treatment costs too much, you don’t buy it. The advantage of self-rationing is it is frank and open, and thus avoids the whining and blaming that characterize bureaucratic systems.

No Blame Game

Paying your own medical bills also lets you see that there are more socially constructive ways to use funds than spending on health care. Suppose that to fix your limping gait requires complicated care costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. If others pay for this care, you might accept it. But suppose you are paying for it with your own savings. Now you might think twice about spending the money on yourself. You might know of a school for autistic children that could put the money to good use. Or you might have a grandchild who needs the money to start a business.

Such decisions are indeed difficult, but we need to face them if we are to make sensible choices about health care. Today we are not facing them. We are hiding behind the confusion of a tangled government/corporate system that pretends we can have all the medical care we want.

Spending my own money on health care helps me set a rational limit to medical spending, even on spending to preserve my life. Not buying health insurance and not allowing politicians to force others to fund my needs helps me keep my consumption of medical resources within fitting bounds.

This way of looking at health insurance may be old-fashioned, but should it be a crime?

THE FREEMAN

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December 2014

Unfortunately, educating people about phenomena that are counterintuitive, not-so-easy to remember, and suggest our individual lack of human control (for starters) can seem like an uphill battle in the war of ideas. So we sally forth into a kind of wilderness, an economic fairyland. We are myth busters in a world where people crave myths more than reality. Why do they so readily embrace untruth? Primarily because the immediate costs of doing so are so low and the psychic benefits are so high.